The Africa–Asia Innovation Exchange (AAIX) uses a systems innovation methodology designed for real-world change—where challenges are complex, power is distributed, and solutions must evolve across institutions, cultures, and contexts.
AAIX focuses on system innovation, not isolated projects. This means shifting the structures, relationships, incentives, and capabilities that shape how systems behave over time.
To support this work, AAIX draws inspiration from three complementary sources, applied in practice across Africa–Asia innovation ecosystems:
Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), developed by scholars and practitioners at the Harvard Kennedy School
Theory U, developed at the MIT Presencing Institute
Indigenous knowledge systems across Africa and Asia, which embody long-standing practices of collective problem-solving, stewardship, and adaptation
AAIX applies all three not as prescriptive frameworks, but as sources of practice and insight that complement the diverse tools, disciplines, and lived experience that Fellows and partners already bring.
This methodology underpins all AAIX programs, including the Transnational Innovation Ecosystem Fellows Program, Co-creation Labs, and institutional partnerships—supported by institutions such as the African School of Government and the Asian School of Governance.
Many innovation initiatives succeed at producing pilots—but fail to change systems.
This happens when efforts:
Focus on solutions without addressing underlying system constraints
Treat innovation as a project rather than a shared capability
Ignore power, culture, history, and institutional behavior
AAIX works on challenges where:
Problems are systemic, not isolated
Change requires multiple actors to move together
Progress depends on legitimacy, trust, and local grounding
System innovation requires methods that can work with complexity, context, and culture, not against them.
AAIX recognizes that Fellows and partners arrive with deep expertise and established toolsets—from design thinking and policy analysis to systems mapping, agile delivery, and community-led methods.
PDIA and Theory U are introduced to complement—not replace—these existing approaches.
PDIA strengthens problem focus, iteration, and learning-by-doing, particularly in constrained institutional environments.
Theory U deepens collective sense-making, trust-building, and alignment across difference.
Together, they provide shared reference points that help diverse actors co-create across Africa–Asia contexts.
AAIX also draws inspiration from indigenous knowledge systems across Africa and Asia—living bodies of knowledge developed over generations through close interaction with social, ecological, and spiritual systems.
These knowledge systems contribute critical insights into:
Collective decision-making and consensus-building
Stewardship of shared resources
Long-term thinking and intergenerational responsibility
Adaptation in conditions of uncertainty and scarcity
Rather than extracting or codifying indigenous knowledge into rigid tools, AAIX engages with these traditions as ways of knowing and working that inform how co-creation is practiced—emphasizing humility, relational accountability, and contextual intelligence.
AAIX combines PDIA, Theory U, and indigenous knowledge systems because systems innovation requires rigor, depth, and rootedness:
Indigenous knowledge systems ground innovation in place, history, and lived experience
Theory U supports how groups listen, align, and sense emerging possibilities
PDIA supports how groups act, experiment, learn, and adapt
Fellows and partners are encouraged to blend these sources with their own methods, selecting what is most appropriate in each context.
The goal is not methodological purity, but effective, legitimate, and durable system change.
At AAIX, co-creation is the unit of value—because systems cannot be changed by any single actor, discipline, or worldview.
Co-creation means:
Joint framing of system challenges
Shared design of interventions
Collective experimentation and learning
Distributed ownership and accountability
Value is created through shared work that strengthens innovation ecosystems, grounded in local realities and connected across regions.
AAIX treats system learning as a public good.
Through co-creation informed by PDIA, Theory U, indigenous knowledge systems, and Fellows’ existing tools, AAIX produces system assets, including:
Playbooks for system-level experimentation
Governance and partnership models
Ecosystem coordination and scaling mechanisms
Pattern libraries documenting how systems change in practice
These assets are shared through the AAIX Co-creation Commons, enabling others to adapt system innovations to their own contexts.
AAIX advances system innovation by combining PDIA (from Harvard), Theory U (from MIT), and indigenous knowledge systems—alongside the tools Fellows already use—to enable co-creation that reshapes how Africa–Asia systems work over time.